One Year Gone
I remember the first couple of months when I started interacting with you. We bonded over math, the existentialists, and apologetics. It was an unending deluge of back-and-forth Skype messages between you, Mo, Law, Fanta, and me.
But then our relationship deepened. I learned your self-expression spilled past late-night debates into practicing accounting, partying, traveling, drinking, native-internet personhood, going against the grain, sexual expressiveness, a love of data, and teaching.
My most memorable periods with you were all the prep I saw you do as a teacher: re-learning American history, rediscovering math tricks, investing yourself in pedagogy, prepping your kids for math competitions, and paying out of pocket for Chromebooks for every student in your class… yet remaining dissatisfied and upset in this strangely existential way.
There is a palpable pride I’ve felt as I have encountered more people who knew you and were cut from the same fabric of interests, values, discomforts and dreams. I’ve enjoyed seeing more and more communities you built, and more and more friendships and connections you helped nurture: a lot more than was obvious to me. It’s hard to imagine you ever really knew how much we love you. It has felt wholesome meeting, reading from and hearing so many people who loved you, valued you, understood you and accepted you.
It’s strange having to accept that this was your choice. It feels so unfair, but demands to be respected. There is no one I’ve ever known who has battled and wrestled this deeply with being here: tried to fix, tried to accept, tried to run, tried to resolve, and for lack of a better phrase, rationally chose. Nietzsche helps me try to process you better but I don’t know if I do: “There is a certain right by which we may end our own life, a right that we exercise when it becomes the only means of preserving our dignity.” And even though every inch of evolutionary DNA in me screams with pain and rejection at this irreversible reality; my lame attempt at rationality demands that I accept, even respect, and dare value the audacity of your courage. For me, it remains a melting pot of emotions, open chapters of processing that I don’t know how to close.
There is really only one lesson — the lesson I know you would want me — us — to absorb. We have to make here more homely, more hospitable, and more loving for everyone else. It’s an unending duty. It’s an unending moral imperative. We have to lace every inch, atom, particle of this fragile blue marble with love and care. Because like MLK Jr taught us: “In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
I miss you. I miss texting you. I miss waking up to disappeared texts, deleted twitter accounts, abandoned telegram groups. I miss having you call to gush about something new you learnt. I miss hearing you rant about some thought process someone has that you can’t fathom. I miss teasing you about which new person you’re dating, and would break up with in a week. I miss our interactions a lot. Most of all, I miss getting a chance to love you.
The planet is more gloomy because the heavens have you. I hope the heavens value you half as much as I did. Half as much as I do.
I love you.
